New Politics Institute rolls out Internet activism study
02:30 PM Aug 10, 2005
Hot off the presses,
Chris Bowers of MyDD and
Matthew Stoller of The Blogging
of the President study up on the right and left blogospheres
and their different relationships to the country's political discourse.
Sample conclusions:
- "The single most important difference between the blogospheres is
this: the progressive blogosphere is introducing new actors into the
political scene. The right-wing blogosphere is facilitating further
organization of what wasalready a fairly coherent political world."
- "If they do not invest time, energy and resources building a
local blog infrastructure superior to that currently possessed by
conservatives, the comparative advantage of progressives' overall traffic lead will be significantly reduced."
An interesting report, and not the first to observe that some major
conservative sites seem strangely uneasy with comments sections and
community blogging, which are the norm on the left. But I sense a
bit of question-begging here: blogs are plentiful enough to have
ecological characteristics. Surely there is or has been or will
soon be a right-wing blog with the architecture of a Daily Kos
... so, will the right tincture of system structure, erudition and
publicity turn it into a monster, or not?
Put
another way: are the qualitative differences between left and right
blogospheres (even granting the debatable assumption that the authors
accurately diagnose them) temporary, relating to some happenstance of
the field in
its infancy (such as, perhaps, the fact that conservatives were the
earliest adopters, and liberals surged later after the technology had
time to ripen)? Or is evolution of the Nemesis precluded by some
fundamental aspect of
conservatives' sociology or psychology, as the report suggests without
quite venturing to state? And if that's the case, what sorts of
analogous ideological blinders on the left might stand to inhibit the
field? Could the communal nature of liberal blogs themselves be
such a hobble?
The memo indulges a bit of condescension when it could be
digging deeper -- even two of the four "strengths" it attributes to the
right-wing blogosphere are actually familiar complaints about
conservative media dominance. (The authors spice choler with irony by
also nipping the right blogosphere for its propensity to gripe about
the media.)
But
it's a valuable contribution, and after all, it does what bloggers do
best: start conversations. And at least as important for
organizations just wading into blogs, it's got some practical
suggestions for strategic implementation.
On a related note, NPI has also posted the 80-minute video last week's "Reflections of
a Blogger" event with Joe Trippi and Markos Zuniga here.
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